Mon General Hospital was the only hospital in West Virginia ranked for Hospital Safety in the August 2012 issue of Consumer Reports.

“Hospitals should be places you go to get better, but too often the opposite happens,” according to Consumer Reports. In response to this, and to help patients learn about the safety of hospitals in their communities, for the first time Consumer Reports has rated hospitals for safety.

Consumer Reports listed safety ratings for 1,159 of the 6,268 hospitals in the United States, using the most current data available. Hospitals were scored on a 100-point scale. More than half of hospitals received an overall safety score below 50%, according to Consumer Reports.

Mon General Hospital received a Safety Score of 60. The highest safety score in the report was 72 and the lowest was 16. Consumer Reports noted that complications at Mon General Hospital are better than average. It also gave Mon General Hospital high marks for avoiding infections following procedures and in patients with central-line catheters.

Consumer Reports’ ratings were based on six categories of patient safety: hospital-acquired infections, readmissions, communication about medications and discharge, CT scanning, complications, and mortality. All data, except infection information, came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Infection data came from individual states and the Leapfrog Group. The magazine also interviewed patients, physicians, hospital administrators, and safety experts; reviewed medical literature; and looked at hospital inspections and investigations.

The magazine noted that the safety scores provide a unique way to compare hospitals in a community and offer important information about hospital safety nationwide. However, the ratings only included 18 percent of the nation’s hospitals because data on patient harm still isn’t reported fully or consistently nationwide, according to Consumer Reports.

“Hospitals that volunteer safety information, regardless of their score, deserve credit, since the first step in safety is accountability,” said John Santa, MD, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. “But the fact that consumers can’t get a full picture of most hospitals in the U.S. underscores the need for more public reporting.”

The article includes important insights into the state of hospital safely nationwide and what patients need to do to protect themselves when entering a hospital.